Cold Cases stir up raw emotions for victims' families

Apr. 21, 2014

Cold Cases: Tracking Wisconsin’s Unsolved Murders A two-part special report Monday: Will Wisconsin’s next Attorney General make solving cold cases a priority? Tuesday: Some families of murder victims realize they may never get closure.

About Cold Cases Last summer, Gannett Wisconsin Media published an exclusive four-week series called Cold Cases: Tracking Wisconsin’s Unsolved Murders. The Gannett Wisconsin Media Investigative Team spearheaded the project in conjunction with local reporters at all 10 Gannett Wisconsin Media news organizations. The Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism in Madison also partnered with the Gannett newspapers.

. An exclusive online database includes a look at roughly 400 cold homicide cases from across Wisconsin.

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There were times — more than two decades ago — when Mary Wegner was so angry about the sudden disappearance of her daughter, Laurie Depies, that she wanted to lash out.

“At the beginning, if somebody would just have given me a sledgehammer and an old car, I could have gotten rid of this anger and hate,” said Wegner. “But I had no one to put my anger toward.”

That’s because the person who kidnapped Depies from a Town of Menasha parking lot on Aug. 19, 1992 hasn’t been arrested. Wegner still holds out the tiniest bit of hope that her daughter is alive, but knows she may never find out what happened.

Wegner is hardly alone when it comes to battling feelings of hopelessness over longstanding missing persons and unsolved homicide cases. The seemingly endless wait for justice is yet another burden for grief-stricken relatives and loved ones.

That’s the reality for the family of Amber Wilde, who was 19 when she disappeared on Sept. 23, 1998 after failing to show up for a class at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. Officially, Wilde is classified as a missing person. But detectives acknowledge she is likely a homicide victim.

“It’s been over 15 years now,” said Laurie Ehnert, Wilde’s aunt and godmother. “We’re hoping that they find her, just so we know.”

Captain David Mack of the Winnebago County Sheriff’s Department is keenly aware of the frustrations that can build up over the years when murders remain unsolved.

“(Investigators) don’t understand the pain, but we do develop a bond, and can empathize with the dilemma they are in,” he said. “Part of the job is being human.”

Emotional wringer

Depies was 20 when she disappeared after leaving work at the Fox River Mall and driving to the parking lot at her boyfriend’s apartment complex. The Appleton woman hasn’t been heard from for nearly 23 years.

In the days, weeks and months following her disappearance, there were wide-ranging searches, a flurry of activity by volunteers and an extensive police investigation.

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But as time passed without any concrete leads to her whereabouts, the search efforts and the volunteer force eventually waned. Wegner said it was a sad, but understandable, development.

“Your feelings change over time,” she said. “With everybody putting in all that effort and nothing turning up, you could say they did the best they could. It was a gradual diminishing of contact with people in those situations. It wasn’t a shock to the system to have the search stop.”

There have been times when the case appeared to be close to being resolved. In the fall of 2011, for example, Wegner was informed by investigators that Larry DeWayne Hall had confessed to kidnapping and killing her daughter and burying her in a remote area in south-central Wisconsin.

Hall made the admission to investigators at a federal prison in North Carolina, where the Wabash, Ind. man is serving a life sentence for the 1993 kidnapping of an Illinois girl. But Hall’s incriminating statements haven't turned into an arrest. Subsequent searches failed to turn up Depies’ remains, and authorities have been unable to verify the details of Hall's confession.

Wegner said Hall's confession still ranks as the most promising development in the case, but she now thinks it may all be for nothing.

“When you look at it, it was just his words,” she said. “There was no concrete evidence. Maybe he just wanted glory and fame.”

Hall told a reporter during a phone interview from his prison cell in May 2011 that he lured Depies to his van in the Town of Menasha parking lot and then briefly blacked out. When he regained his senses, Hall said, Depies was tied up and unconscious. Hall claimed he killed her and later disposed of her body in a wooded area.

While those statements by Hall have yet to be proven, they were still unsettling to Wegner.

“In a way, it was a relief to put a scenario to the disappearance, but to hear the details … it was heartbreaking to visualize your daughter going through that,” she said.

Wegner, who is retired, draws strength from her family. She also has a passion for gardening and volunteer work.

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But her missing daughter is never far from her mind.

“I still think about Laurie every day,” she said, “especially when I listen to the news. There’s always people dropping off the face of the earth. It happens to so many people. And you can’t help but think of your own situation.”

'The light of my life'

Ehnert, who lives in a small community of Colgate northwest of Milwaukee, laments the fact that Wilde is still missing. But she is pleased that the investigation into her disappearance is not at a standstill. Green Bay police are taking a renewed look at the case.

“They seem genuinely driven to get this case solved,” Ehnert said. “It’s really a good feeling. (Detectives) contacted us about a month ago, and even something simple like that means so much. They really want to do something with this and they are trying hard.”

Wilde, who was pregnant when she vanished, was involved in a fender-bender crash on Sept. 23, 1998, near UWGB. She contacted her father in Mayville later that day and asked him to make sure she was up for a 1 p.m. class the next day.

Police said she also made a trip to a Green Bay grocery store. Later, she made or received another call, using the phone in her apartment, according to police. Then the phone calls ended, and Wilde was gone.

Detectives have re-submitted evidence to a state crime lab, hoping the investigation might benefit from technology not available in 1998.

Ehnert holds out little hope that Wilde is still alive.

“Once you come to terms with that, you want to find out what happened — just to know. That’s all.”

Ehnert has always been close to Wilde, dating back to their childhood days. While she felt angry in the early days following Wilde’s disappearance, those feelings have been replaced by sadness.

“You go through phases,” she said. “Some days, even now, I hear songs from that era that remind me of her.

“She was the light of my life.”

Never say never

While there are hundreds of unsolved homicide cases in Wisconsin — some going back as far as 50 years — they haven’t been discarded by investigators.

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There are occasional breakthroughs, including earlier this month when Racine County authorities arrested a 36-year-old Illinois man in the 1997 slaying of a 14-year-old girl.

At roughly the same time, Fond du Lac County investigators disclosed they had evidence that potentially linked a 60-year-old truck driver from Kenosha to the 1990 murder of Berit Beck. The 18-year-old Sturtevant woman disappeared in Fond du Lac on her way to a computer seminar in Appleton on July 17, 1990. Her van was found two days later in Fond du Lac and her body was discovered six weeks later in a ditch near Waupun.

Authorities said the Kenosha man is a prime suspect, but cautioned that an arrest is not imminent. Still, it was welcome news to Beck’s mother, Diane Beck.

Mack, who oversees cold case investigations for the Winnebago County Sheriff’s Department, said the department doesn’t give up on old homicides.

Mack said advances in DNA testing gives hope to investigators in trying to solve cold cases.

“There’s been so many success stories for cases that have been solved,” Mack said. “It really gives us hope for leads for these unsolved cases.”

Mack said it’s important to keep family members of murder victims in the loop during the investigative process — even those cases that stretch on for decades.

“Some people come to grips with dealing with the loss they’ve experienced, and they’re appreciative that law enforcement hasn’t forgotten about their loved ones,” Mack said. “Others have a harder time coming to closure without answers to their questions.

“If I’m up-front with them and tell them I will be here for you and allow you access to me and provide you answers, I find that they really appreciate that,” he said.